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Indian Pudding

A baked pudding made with milk, Indian meal, flour, spices, molasses, raisins, suet, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding base

  1. Boil half the milk and add the Indian meal, stirring until thickened.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the remaining milk, flour, ginger, cinnamon, lemon peel, salt, molasses, and suet.

  3. Add the boiled meal mixture to the bowl and mix well.

  4. Beat the eggs and fold them into the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Ginger + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the boiled milk, giving the pudding its body and firm, sliceable texture.
Eggs
Eggs set during baking, binding the mixture into a custard-like pudding.
Molasses
Molasses adds sweetness, dark color, and a deep caramel-like flavor.
Suet
Suet adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it bakes.
Flour
Flour adds extra thickening so the pudding holds its shape.

The step that matters

Boil the milk before adding the meal. Cornmeal must be cooked in hot liquid to swell and thicken properly; adding it to cold milk can leave lumps and a grainy texture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, ginger, cinnamon, egg, molasses, raisin):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, ginger, cinnamon, egg, molasses, raisin. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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